ON THIS DAY

MARCH 14

44BC Casca and Cassius decide on the eve of the assassination of Julius Caesar, on the Ides of March, to spare the life of Mark Antony.

1898 Barney Barnato’s nephew Woolf Joel is shot dead because he won’t help kidnap Transvaal President Paul Kruger.

1926 A train plunges off a bridge over the Rio Virilla, Costa Rica, killing 248 people.

1939 After nine days of play spread over 12 days, England abandon the Timeless Test (the longest cricket Test match in history) with South Africa in Durban because they were about to miss the boat home. Set a winning target of 696, the visitors left the field at 654 for 5 (the highest first-class fourth innings score). The match had not been expected to take more than five days.

1961 A USAF B-52 bomber crashes near Yuba City, California. Its nuclear weapons did not detonate as their safety devices worked properly, but a fireman is killed and several others injured in a road accident en route to the accident scene.

1964 A Dallas jury finds nightclub owner Jack Ruby guilty of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, the assumed assassin of president John F Kennedy. Ruby was convicted of murder with malice and sentenced to death for the fatal shooting on live TV. The sentence and verdict were later overturned. While arrangements were under way for a new trial, Ruby was admitted to the same hospital that both Oswald and Kennedy were taken to and died there of a pulmonary embolism, owing to lung cancer.

1971 Ken Rosewall beats Arthur Ashe 6-1, 7-5, 6-3 in the Australian Open final and becomes the first man to win an Open-era Grand Slam singles title without dropping a set. 1984 The nuclear power station at Koeberg becomes operational. 2018 A Nasa study finds that astronaut Scott Kelly is no longer identical to his twin brother because, after a year in space, 7% of his genes have changed.